Aug. 29, 1901. 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL, 



549 



breeders of simplicity, and lack of insight into matters 

 which go toward making a scientific breeder of other stock, 

 have failed, in that they have not taken this mating ques- 

 tion into consideration as they should. I know that there 

 are queen-breeders of the present time who have put as 

 much thought into it, and spent as much time thoroughly to 

 equip themselves, for their business, as any breeder of any 

 of our domestic animals. And because they could not con- 

 trol the mating of their queens, is no sign why they should 

 be classified with the ignoramuses in breeding domestic 

 animals. This last is not thrown at Mr. Simpson, for he 

 has treated the queen-breeders of the present very fairly, as 

 far as I have seen. 



And now I wish to say a word about that " in-breed- 

 ing " matter. The reason, Mr. Simpson, why " the 

 regular contributors to the bee-papers have not shown any 

 desire to give us any specific aid on this subject," is, 

 because, under the present state of affairs, there can not 

 well be any in-breeding with our bees. With thousands 

 and millions of drones, from scores and hundreds of hives, 

 within a circle of five to ten miles in diameter, all congre- 

 gating together, as the stallions in the forest, there is very 

 little chance that any queen could possibly mate with a 

 drone from her own mother. But suppose she did ? Does 

 not Mr. S. know that it would be only her mating with a 

 //^//-brother ? The drone is " the son of his mother " while 

 the queen is the daughter of her mother and father. And 

 as the drone is always, practically speaking, the son of his 

 mother, in-breeding could be carried on for several gener- 

 ations, even with a full control of both queen and drone, 

 before we could practically mate a brother and sister. And 

 with the present conditions of mating, and with no chance 

 at all of having " our say in the matter," it is simply folly 

 for bee-keepers to talk about in-breeding, or to say very 

 much regarding the mating of their queens any way, as 

 to what drone she mated with. 



The very best I have been able to do on the drone-side- 

 has been to keep a lot of drones from my best breeder, not 

 nearly akin to the queen-mother, till fall, after other drones 

 were killed off, then " hand pick " them, culling out all the 

 inferior ones, when I had some reasonable assurance that 

 queens reared at this time would mate with some of these 

 drones, providing that some other colony within the circuit 

 of the flight of "drone and queen," did not have a failing 

 queen, or was queenless, in which case there would prob- 

 ably be hundreds of drones from such a colony to where 

 there was tens of my hand-picked specimens. 



I spent much of the time during the later seventies and 

 early eighties in trying plans for the control of fertiliza- 

 tion, thinking them out nights and trying them days, 

 besides nearly all the plans advised by others, and after 

 having to write " A failure " after each experiment, I 

 settled down to try to do the best I could from the queen 

 side, which thing I have been doing ever since. But I am 

 free to admit, with Mr. Simpson, that, if I could have had 

 complete control over the drone which mated with any 

 queen during all these years, there would have been more 

 " value in the figures " than there is at present ; although 

 a yield per colony of from dO to 80 pounds of comb honey 

 from red clover this year, with little or nothing 20 years 

 ago, proves that I have not labored entirely in vain. 



Onondaga Co., N. Y. 



, Continued from pape 534.} 



No. 12. 



Practical Lessons for Beginners in Bee- 

 Culture. 



BY J. D. GEHRING. 



ONE of the most serious of the short-comings among 

 those who keep bees on the farm is, that they don't 

 know what to do with them in case of sudden emergen- 

 cies. Robbing is one of the worst of these, please remem- 

 ber, Mr. Bond. Even if you reduce the present number of 

 your colonies, as you now contemplate doing, down to one 

 or two, you will need to be informed on this subject in order 

 to be ready for business when the bees furnish the occasion. 



" A few years ago I sold a colony of bees to a man who 

 lives about a mile south of here. He said his wife was 

 crazy to have some bees, but didn't know anything about 

 managing them. But as he knew how, and wasn't afraid 

 of them, he thought they could risk it to begin with one 

 colony. 



" Well, he took the hive I sold him home early in April. 

 It was one of my best colonies. I instructed him how to 



make the bees mark their new location, and how to man- 

 age when a swarm should issue — the colony having a 

 clipped queen. 



"A large swarm was secured all right some time dur- 

 ing the month of May, and the queen taken care of accord- 

 ing to directions. When it was time to put supers on I 

 went and showed him how to put them on. All seemed to 

 go well, except that no honey was stored in the supers, save 

 a few pounds during the late season. I also instructed 

 both of them one evening how to prepare the colonies for 

 wintering, either outdoors, or in the cellar. 



" Well, they thought 'twould be a capital idea to try 

 both methods of wintering, so he carried one hive — the one 

 containing the new swarm- -into the cellar, leaving tlie 

 mother colony out in the cold. The phrase, 'out in the 

 cold,' was severely emphasized by the fact — not known to 

 me till the following spring — that my friend neglected to 

 carry out my instructions as to how the hive should be pre- 

 pared for the outdoor siege. He didn't even have time, he 

 said, to take the super of nearly empty sections off before 

 cold weather set in. 



" One day in early April he came to me and requested 

 that I should come and tell him what ailed his bees. The 

 old colony, he said, was about played out, and the other 

 hadn't seemed to act right since he had brought it out of 

 the cellar. 



"When I had finished examining those hives I found 

 no queen in the latter, and not a spoonful of honey in the 

 first, though I found a small and feeble-looking queen 

 there. I told him to feed the honeyless bees at least a pint 

 of syrup a day until fruit-trees were in bloom ; and more if 

 necessary. I furnished him a feeder and full instructions 

 with it. But those bees were all dead when I saw him 

 again — about two days later. His wife thought it was too 

 expensive to feed bees so much syrup ; and he, being more 

 liberal, thought it took too much time. These points I got 

 later, and from an outside source. 



"I also furnished that man a frame of brood, put it in 

 place for him, and cautioned him to watch the hive very 

 closely until a new queen could hatch out. He didn't do it, 

 although I had fully explained why it would be necessary. 

 The result was that he lost that colony also, and as follows : 



" One day, soon after giving him the foregoing advice, 

 he sent me word by telephone to come up as soon as pos- 

 sible — the bees were robbing. When I arrived on the scene 

 an hour later I found the reverse of his statement to be 

 only too true : The colony had been robbed 1 Not only the 

 honey was gone, but all the bees also. 



"On inquiring for particulars, I learned that early that 

 morning the colony seemed to be all right, and busily work- 

 ing — ' lots of bees in the hive,' he said. Here, then, was an 

 entirely new — new to me then — feature in this case of rob- 

 bing. I couldn't conclude otherwise than that, after realiz- 

 ing that resistance was useless, or worse, that colony of 

 bees made a full surrender, filled up with honey, as they do 

 when about to swarm out, and went with the robbers in a 

 body. This is not a groundless theory, but evidently a fact. 

 There was no other sensible explanation, as but a few 

 dozen dead bees were found near the hive, and none in it. 



" Before I left for home I requested my friend to show 

 me the place in the cellar where the colony had wintered. 

 There I found the solution of the cause of the robbing : 

 the dead queen on the cement floor of the cellar, among 

 perhaps one-third of the bees, also dead ! The foolish man 

 had neglected to screen the bee-entrance, and had given the 

 bees no ventilation in the hive ; and he had also allowed too 

 much light in that part of the cellar. And yet, to this day, 

 those people can't understand how it was that I had an 

 average, the previous season, of 75 pounds of honey to the 

 colony, while they, only a mile away, and with two colo- 

 nies of i/iy bees, didn't get a pound ! 



" I have related this case in detail, Mr. Bond, to show 

 how absolutely essential to success it is to attend to at/ the 

 details in the management of even one colony. It is even 

 more important when you have one or two only, instead of 

 50 or 100 ; because, if you lose one, or both, you are out of 

 the business entirely." 



"That's a very interesting case," remarked Mr. Bond ; 

 and instructive, too, as far as it goes. But in telling the 

 story you failed to tell me just what you told your friend to 

 do with those hives, to prepare them for winter, each in a 

 different way and place. I think I ought to know those 

 details," concluded Mr. Bond. 



" I should have overlooked that fact if you hadn't men-, 

 tioned it," I replied ; " and it's the really valuable part of 

 the story to you, too. Well, I can repeat the substance of 



